In the end, despite everything he had seen in all those dreams of his, they ended up staying at the motel for a few hours, watching as it burned to the ground and keeping an eye out for Duo. It had been futile, of course, but it had been worth a shot. Anything towards finding Duo was worth a shot, as far as she was concerned.
She wasn't too sure how, but they had managed to avoid having to give statements to the police about what had happened. She really was uncertain as to how they had gotten away with it, because there was no way anyone could look at her and not be able to tell that she had been in the motel: she looked particularly bedraggled, still covered in soot with more than a few bandages adorning various parts of her anatomy, in addition to the ones no one would be able to see on her feet beneath the boots.
Even the EMS worker, Lisa, who had actually done the bandaging up on her, seemed unable to see or recognize her when the other woman looked her way. It was bizarre to say the least. She was pretty willing to give the Ginzuishou credit for that: her heart might have been conflicted on a great many things right now, but she was definitely certain that she wanted all these strangers to just leave her alone. She wanted her Heero and her Duo, and the rest of the world could go hang for all she cared.
Not to say that she didn't care about the rest of the world, because in a way she did, but to her, right now, her two lovers were much more important than anyone else.
Lovers... Wow... That made it sound completely tawdry, like all any of them were interested in was sex, and that couldn't be further from the truth, at least not as far as she was concerned. It was very weird to her, since she had only known them a few days now and yet she had... with both of them... at the same time... And she didn't regret it in the least. She didn't regret making love with them. But she seriously needed a better word than 'lovers'. This was going to take some brain power that she wasn't too sure she had to spare right now.
Once it had become clear that Duo wasn't going to magically reappear at the motel, she and Heero had begun the long trek into the nearest town, where Heero had left the car in his urgency to get back to them before anything happened. It hadn't helped; those people had still taken Duo, and there hadn't been anything either of them could do about it; but she could definitely understand feeling as though running the several miles would be quicker than waiting for a ride or trying to fix the car first. Heero assured her that it was a relatively simple fix, and the car would be running again by morning. Sparkplugs and a new battery, if she was remembering correctly.
It had been a long, tortuous walk for her, her feet hurting more and more every step of the way, but there was really no way around it. She wasn't going to let Heero out of her sight, and she didn't think that he was going to do the same either. So she had gritted her teeth and marched on. It was about eight or so kilometers, but it had felt forever long nonetheless. It could have been worse, though. It could have been a lot worse.
The car was still parked in front of the diner Heero had been at when he first heard what was happening back at the motel, but there wasn't much point in trying to move it, not right now, not until they had it fixed. So instead, they walked next door to the diner and got a room at the hotel instead.
It was much nicer than the motel, she thought wearily, and that was probably why they hadn't stayed there when it was the three of them: this was the kind of place where the staff was likely to remember the patrons, which was more attention than they had wanted. It was still more than they wanted, but it wasn't like there were a lot of other choices. This town had been a layover in their journey, a place they had been planning to stay a night, if at all.
Actually they hadn't been planning on staying in this town to begin with. Construction on the highway had delayed them more than they had anticipated, and so had necessitated a stop here. It was weird to her, then, that this was the town that those men caught up with them. Why here? And how long had they been following them? Or following just her, if that was indeed the case.
She was too tired for much in depth thinking. She had been assured over and over through the years by plenty of people that it was not exactly her strong suite anyway. Fighting, crying, and being too lazy for words, those were her strong suits.
'Usagi...' a voice very much like Rei-chan's scolded her from the very back of her thoughts. 'Don't think like that. You have to be strong and be positive to get through this, to get your man back.'
God, she really missed Rei-chan, now that she remembered who Rei-chan was and what the Senshi of Fire had meant to her. If she had had to say that one person had been her best friend, even despite all their arguing and fights and everything, she would have said Rei-chan. Ami-chan might have been her first friend among the Senshi, Mako-chan might have been her fierce protector, and Minako-chan might have been her twin and sister in everything but blood, but Rei-chan had been her best friend.
She missed her Senshi: the Inners and the Outers. It was weird. She might not have the clearest of memories of all of them, but she knew she missed them. She missed Setsuna-san's cryptic nature. She missed Haruka-san's brashness. She even missed Michiru-san's aloofness. She missed Hotaru-chan's quiet sageness and how the youngest Senshi had been so good for ChibiUsa.
And oh God... ChibiUsa... It had taken the thought of Saturn to bring the beginnings of a memory of her future daughter back, but once it was back, it was with a vengeance. How could she have forgotten ChibiUsa?
"Usagi?" Heero asked from in front of her. She looked up then blinked and looked around. She had been so distracted, so intent on just putting one foot in front of the other, for so long she hadn't even realized that they were in a room. Amazingly, it looked like it was fully twice the size of the room in the motel. She wasn't sure if she liked that or not. It had been very... cozy in a way, up until the end when there was no way out of it.
"Yeah?" she returned.
"Are you all right?"
She assessed herself quickly and nodded. "I'm all right." She paused, relenting to the disbelieving look on his face. "I will be all right. I just need some rest."
"You looked sad."
"I was just... remembering," she finally admitted. It was not an easy confession to make, but it actually felt pretty good to have it out. Confession was supposed to be good for the soul after all. That was what the priests in the movies always said, after all. "I was just remembering things that are never going to happen now."
"I don't think I follow."
She shrugged. "Pretty much, magic and time travel, Heero. Sure you want to know?" He hadn't seemed too receptive the idea of the former, and she was betting that the latter was equally unappealing to him.
"No, not at all, but," he paused, swallowing back what appeared to be nervousness, though it certainly didn't show on his face or in his voice, "if you need to tell it, I'll listen."
Given his previous reaction, it was a pretty huge offer. It would have been stupid of her to turn it down. All the same, though, she offered him an out right at the beginning. "If any of this gets too weird, Heero, let me know and I'll stop."
"It got past too weird a few weeks ago," she sent him a severe look, "but I will let you know. Why don't you go ahead and sit down first, though?" Tactfully, he didn't say anything about how exhausted she must look. She was actually surprised that a nice hotel like this had let her in the door in the first place.
"If I sit down, I'm not sure I'm going to get back up again tonight," she admitted.
"Sit down, Usagi." Despite the phrasing, it was more of a request than an order. She appreciated that. It couldn't be the easiest thing in the world for Heero, with all of this going on, to try to focus on being polite. Slowly, painfully, she sank down on the bed, eyeing the boots on her feet with disgust. She didn't want to go to sleep with those things on; Lisa had actually instructed her not to; but she also didn't want to think too heavily about trying to remove them either. Thankfully, though, Heero seemed to recognize the look on her face. "Do you need help getting those shoes off?"
She nodded and braced herself. Clearly, he had some experience with getting around injuries, even relatively minor ones like these. Compared to some she had received over the years of fighting, these were pretty minor, but they were annoying and uncomfortable. Plus she had had no choice but to walk on them for longer than she wanted to think of. Heero, though, was very cautious with removing them, and it only hurt a little bit.
She snorted her amusement as Heero set the second one down beside its mate and turned his attention to the bandages on her feet. "Remind me to never go barefoot ever again if I can help it."
"So what happened?"
She shrugged. "I didn't have my shoes on when we broke out of the room, then Duo tossed me in the forest to keep those guys from finding me. It was a long walk back." That was the simplest explanation.
He nodded, as if it all made perfect sense to him. Well, that was good. It didn't make a lot of sense to her. Her whole life had been weird from the time she was fourteen and first became Sailor Moon, and all of this was weird to her.
"So did you want to talk about what was upsetting you before?" She had the distinct feeling that, if he allowed any emotion to enter his voice, it would be nervousness. This didn't seem like the conversation he would normally initiate. For that matter, it wasn't one she would have expected from any of the guys she knew or had known. Maybe Seiya-kun, but she wasn't too sure that that counted.
"I'm starting to remember a lot more. It started coming back to me when those men attacked us, and there was more back when I woke up in the forest. It's not everything, but it's more. I was just remembering someone I knew back then, someone who was supposed to be from my future. I think that would be the past now, so I guess... I doubt she was ever born now, with whatever happened that brought me here."
"You don't remember what happened?" he asked as he finished unwinding the bandages. The small cuts on her feet seemed to have made the long trek relatively okay, so that was good if nothing else. She still wasn't looking too forward to seeing all the bruises that no doubt littered her body. "Nothing at all?"
She shook her head slowly. "I remember wings and blackness. I remember everyone I knew dying, one after the other after the other. But what exactly was the final trigger, what sent me here, I don't remember yet." And she wasn't too sure she wanted to. As it stood right now, she remembered it being down to her, the Starlights, and Galaxia... and something with a sword... but after that was a total blank. She had watched all of her own Senshi die; she didn't want to relive the deaths of the Starlights too.
Had Galaxia won? Was that what had happened? No, that didn't make sense. Galaxia wanted to take over the universe. If they hadn't stopped her somehow, if she had succeeded, even this time would probably still be affected by the mad former Senshi. It didn't make sense. All the same, though, she wasn't pushing her mind for anything else right now. For the moment, she was going to be content in the memories she had recovered.
Even if the memories were painful, they were better than having none at all, she supposed. When she woke up, there had been his horrible empty blackness where her past, her entire life, should have been. In that hospital and then with Relena-san, she had worried that she was never going to get her life back. Now she was starting to, in both small and huge chunks, and she almost wished she didn't remember. Almost. They were painful, but they were pieces of her life. She would take the good with the bad.
Besides, in addition to all the fights and battles and monsters, she remembered good times: laughing with Minako-chan, eating Mako-chan's cooking, visiting Rei-chan at the temple, Ami-chan helping her study to get into high school...
Funny. Mamo-chan had come easily back into her thoughts, but now she didn't seem to be able to hold him there. She had the faint memory of the love they had shared, and it was a bittersweet memory, thanks to the past and future that was always intruding. But it wasn't the all-consuming love it had been when they had been together. Instead, it felt like time had faded it, so that she could look back on it with fondness. She didn't miss it and all the destiny that came with it.
It was because she was falling in love again, she decided to herself. She wasn't quite willing to say that out loud just yet, though. Not until they had Duo back with them.
"Usagi?" Heero's voice cut through her thoughts.
She shook her head slightly to clear it and refocused her attention on him. "Yes, Heero?"
"Does the name 'Sailor Moon' mean anything to you?"
Now that was funny: she had always heard people talk about feeling the blood drain from their faces, but she had never experienced it before.
27 July 2012
Okay, so the story is done. I was holding off on posting until I got 100 hits... but mostly I'm reading to get this chapter up... so here you go.
Apollymi